North Korea

The Korean crisis

www.socialistworld.net, 08/02/2003 website of the committee for a workers' international, CWI

IN OCTOBER 2002 US imperialism provoked a confrontation with the
isolated and floundering Stalinist regime of North Korea. Revealing
publicly the news (known to the US administration for some time) that
Kim Jong-il’s regime had resumed its nuclear weapons programme in
violation of the 1994 ’agreed framework’, the Bush administration
ignored the fact that the US had consistently reneged on its own 1994
promises.

Lynn Walsh, CWI

Last autumn, as the Bush administration geared up for a showdown with
Iraq, a full-blown diplomatic and military crisis was developing on the
Korean peninsula, once again raising the spectre of war and nuclear
conflict. LYNN WALSH analyses this new and disturbing feature of world
relations.

CWI onlin.

The Korean crisis

Leaning on South Korea and Japan, the US cut off the oil supplies being
delivered to North Korea under the 1994 agreement. There would be no
talks or further economic assistance, proclaimed the US, until North
Korea unconditionally abandoned its nuclear weapons programme. The White
House hawks were evidently sure that Kim Jong-il would back down - but
that was a serious miscalculation. North Korea defiantly announced that
it would continue its nuclear programme until the US entered serious
talks to normalise relations between North Korea, South Korea, and the
US. Moreover, the North would retaliate in the event of any military
attack by the US - which appeared to be threatened in Bush’s ’axis of
evil’ speech and recent US actions.

Despite its commitment to pre-emptive military action against any state
developing weapons of mass destruction, US imperialism was forced to
retreat. While continuing hard-line threats against North Korea, the US
began to reassure the world that it would seek a ’diplomatic solution’
to the crisis. Colin Powell and other US representatives began to speak,
in somewhat coded language, about new talks and economic concessions. In
reality, the hawk administration had been forced to confront the limits
of US military power. "In private", reported the New York Times, "some
of the president’s aides... said that North Korea’s existing nuclear
capacity, and its ability to wreak enormous damage on Seoul with its
conventional weapons, had led them to conclude that the US had no viable
military options in dealing with the North, at least without risking the
rekindling of the Korean war". (2 January)

Moreover, despite Rumsfeld’s public claims that it was perfectly
possible for the US to conduct two regional wars simultaneously, the US
strategists were forced to recognise that, in reality, two wars would
put massive strains on the US’s strategic capabilities. The diplomatic
and political overheads of preparing for a second war would seriously
distract from US efforts to mobilise support for an attack on Iraq.

Powell and others worked hard to play down the consequences of the US’s
confrontational policy. There is no ’crisis’, said Powell, only a
’serious situation’. There would be no ’negotiations’ but there would be
’talks’. The glaring contradiction, however, between the US policy on
Iraq, on the one side, and North Korea, on the other, destroys the
legitimacy claimed for an attack on Iraq. This devastating exposure of
US hypocrisy is a serious blow to the superpower’s prestige.

Anatomy of a crisis

AS IN 1993-94, North Korea is using the threat of nuclear weapons
(whether actual or potential) and its formidable conventional arsenal to
force the US superpower into negotiations. Kim Jong-il’s regime needs
economic concessions to avoid collapse, and just as crucially needs an
end to the strategic siege imposed by the US since the end of the Korean
war (1950-53). Pyongyang’s nuclear brinkmanship, though potentially
dangerous, is driven by fear rather than by militaristic ambition. The
rotten Stalinist dictatorship faces the prospect of an implosion. Since
the collapse of the Soviet Union, which deprived North Korea of vital
economic support, the regime has consistently attempted to secure from
the US a non-aggression pact, recognition of its sovereignty, and
economic assistance. The US’s equally consistent refusal to enter into
direct negotiations with North Korea, effectively ruling out a peace
treaty to formally close the 1950-53 Korean war, has encouraged the
regime to resort to nuclear blackmail.

The 1994 ’agreed framework’ provided an opportunity for defusing the
Korean conflict. The US, however, never fulfilled its promises, leading
North Korea to secretly renew its nuclear weapons policies. The
aggressive, reckless policy of the Bush administration has been the
primary cause of a renewed confrontation, once again raising the spectre
of war and nuclear conflict.

During 1993-94 the CIA discovered that, despite signing the
Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1985, North Korea was developing a nuclear
weapons programme based on its plutonium-producing reactor at Yongbyon.
Whether they actually produced weapons (or now possess usable weapons)
is not certain, though North Korea has not carried out the kind of
nuclear tests considered essential to producing a viable weapon.
Nevertheless, Clinton has recently admitted that "we actually drew up
plans to attack North Korea and to destroy their reactors, and we told
them we would attack unless they ended their nuclear programme". US
imperialism’s own military assessment, however, concluded that the cost
of an offensive against North Korea would be too high. Full-scale war on
the peninsula would claim up to one million dead, including up to
100,000 Americans. The immediate cost to the US would exceed $100bn,
while the cost of destruction and economic dislocation would be over $1
trillion. This was apart from the horrendous consequences of a nuclear
conflict.

Instead, the US (through mediation by former president Carter)
negotiated the agreed framework. In return for North Korea suspending
its nuclear weapons programme, the US would provide economic assistance
in the form of oil, food and the construction of two
(non-plutonium-producing) ’light water’ reactors for electricity
generation. Just as important for the North, however, was the US promise
to move towards "full normalisation of political and economic relations".

Apart from providing oil, however, the US did not proceed to fulfil its
promises. Construction of the two nuclear power stations was repeatedly
postponed, and there were no serious talks on the normalisation of
relations. Clinton was undoubtedly under pressure from the
Republican-dominated Congress not to end economic sanctions or honour US
promises. At the same time, Clinton’s administration believed that the
North was on the verge of collapse: they calculated that economic
problems would force the regime into unilateral military concessions,
even if the US did not deliver.

In 1998, North Korea resumed missile testing, firing some missiles over
Japan. This was partly to promote its missile sales (estimated to be
$50-100m a year to states such as Pakistan, Syria, Iran, Iraq, and
Yemen) and partly to put pressure on the US to resume negotiations.

In June 2000 there was a summit meeting between Kim Jong-il and the
South Korean president, Kim Dae-jung. A big section of the capitalist
class in the South is strongly in favour of reaching agreement with the
North, to prevent a collapse and avoid the devastating consequences of a
mass exodus. Japanese capitalism also wants a rapprochement with North
Korea, though negotiations were delayed by the shocked reaction in Japan
to North Korea’s admission that the regime had abducted over a dozen
Japanese citizens during the 1970s and 1980s. This confession and
apology was apparently intended to placate Japan but had the opposite
effect (despite Kim also renouncing North Korea’s demand for wartime
reparations).

The takeover in Washington by Bush and his foreign policy hawks,
however, cut across the process of détente developing among the
North-East Asian states. Bush broke off talks with North Korea and
adopted a confrontational approach. In his State of the Union Speech
(January 2002) Bush declared North Korea to be part of an ’axis of
evil’, in language that was tantamount to a declaration of war. Later,
the US National Security Statement authorised a policy of pre-emptive
military strikes against any state acquiring weapons of mass destruction.

In June 2002 the CIA produced a secret intelligence report that since
1998 North Korea had restarted its nuclear weapons programme, this time
on the basis of the uranium-enrichment process (as an alternative to
reactor-produced plutonium). An assistant secretary of state, James
Kelly, was sent to Pyongyang to deliver an ultimatum to Kim Jong-il -
drop your nuclear programme or face the consequences. Bush and his hawks
evidently believed that Kim would back down. Instead, the regime
admitted they had restarted their nuclear programme, and threatened to
accelerate the development of nuclear weapons unless the US fulfilled
its framework agreement promises and entered into serious negotiations
to normalise relations.

After Kelly’s visit the US publicly announced the existence of North
Korea’s new nuclear programme, clearly with the intention of gearing up
another confrontation with North Korea. Very little publicity, however,
was given to a key element of the CIA’s report - evidence that the
technology for uranium enrichment had been supplied to North Korea by
Pakistan’s Musharraf regime. Pakistan has a nuclear arsenal but needs
the missiles necessary to deploy them operationally. Facing acute
economic crisis in 1997, the Pakistan regime supplied North Korea with
uranium-processing equipment in exchange for their latest ballistic
missiles. Another glaring contradiction. The US’s key ally in the war
against the Taliban regime in Afghanistan was actively collaborating in
a nuclear weapons programme with a ’rogue’ state, part of Bush’s ’axis
of evil’.

The US put pressure on South Korea and Japan to halt the oil supplies to
the North. In retaliation, North Korea restarted its Yongbyon reactor,
removed UN monitoring equipment and ordered International Atomic Energy
Agency inspectors to leave the country. On 10 January this year, North
Korea formally withdrew from the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

The unanticipated consequences of Bush’ provocative policy towards North
Korea have again revealed the deep split within the Bush administration
between hawks, who want to pursue confrontation, and the doves, who
advocate ’engagement’ and negotiations. " I have never seen a more
divided group in my 30 years of involvement in foreign policy",
commented a veteran of the Republican foreign policy establishment (New
York Times, 13 January). They appear to be lurching between wielding the
big stick and dangling fresh carrots. Bush is insisting on referring
North Korea to the UN Security Council for breach of the Non
Proliferation Treaty, a step towards new sanctions. At the same time,
Powell and others are raising the possibility of further economic
assistance. Both Russia and South Korea have opened talks to try to
reach a negotiated settlement of the conflict. For the time being, the
diplomatic approach prevails in Washington, mainly because Iraq takes
priority. There is little doubt, however, that the hawks see North Korea
as the next target, once they have dealt with Iraq.

The North Korean regime

UNDER PRESSURE OF a deep internal crisis, the Kim Sung-il regime has,
since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the other Stalinist states
after 1990, desperately sought to break out of its extreme isolation.
Using its capacity to develop nuclear weapons as a bargaining counter,
North Korea has attempted to open up economic relations with its
neighbours and the rest of the world and at the same time negotiate a
’non-aggression pact’ with the US. While the country’s economic crisis
is profound, with even the possibility of a collapse, the North Korean
regime is not willing to bargain away its potential nuclear capacity
solely in return for economic assistance - survival of the regime, Kim’s
primary aim, depends on a strategic détente with US imperialism.

In 1994, under the framework agreement, North Korea agreed to suspend
its nuclear weapons development, but fearing that the Clinton
administration was reneging on its promises, the regime secretly renewed
its nuclear programme. Rather than preparing for war, however, which
would undoubtedly result in the total destruction of Korea, the regime’s
main aim is to use the threat of nuclear weapons to pressure the US into
’talks’ (negotiations) on a non-aggression ’agreement’ (effectively, a
tripartite North Korea-South Korea-US treaty) formally concluding the
1950-53 Korean war and recognising North Korea’s right to exist. North
Korea’s real motive is recognised by former US president Carter, who
said recently "they are using these fiery and public statements [about
preparing for war] in order to accomplish their long-standing goal of
negotiating a permanent and positive relationship with the US". (New
York Times, 17 January)

North Korea is a fossilised form of Stalinism, a grotesque distortion of
the idea of socialism, modelled on the bureaucratically planned
economies of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Hardened by the
Korean war and the prolonged US military threat during the cold war,
North Korea has been far more isolated, monolithic and rigid than other
variants of Stalinism. Kim Jong-il is a hereditary dictator, taking over
from his father, Kim Il-sung, in 1994. He has continued the cult of
personality around the ’Great Leader’, and the ideology of ’Juche’
(self-sufficiency), linked to a xenophobic attitude to all foreigners.
Kim Jong-il, however, has reportedly strengthened the role of the tops
of the army and security apparatus in the regime, trying to counter the
weight of the ’old guard’ leadership of the ruling Korean Workers’
Party, who oppose his move towards economic reform and détente with
imperialism.

The regime is ideologically monolithic and rules by totalitarian
methods. There are thought to be over 200,000 political prisoners,
mostly in labour camps. The military apparatus dominates the state.
There are around a million troops, most of them stationed just north of
the demilitarised zone (DMZ) and only about 30 miles north of Seoul.
North Korea has a massive array of conventional weaponry: tanks, heavy
artillery, missiles, military aircraft and warships, though most is now
technologically outmoded. This is a massive burden on the economy.

The regime’s apparent paranoia - or permanent siege mentality - is not
without historical causes. After a long and bitter guerrilla struggle
against the occupation of the Korean peninsula by Japanese imperialism,
the leadership of the Korean Communist Party then faced an intervention
by US imperialism to prevent the reunification of Korea after the second
world war. During the Korean war (1950-53) the US military commander,
General McArthur, advocated dropping 20 or 30 nuclear bombs on the North
- this was only five years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The
conventional bombardment of the North, previously the most
industrialised region of Korea, caused enormous casualties and massive
destruction of the country’s infrastructure. After the war (never
formally ended with a peace treaty), the US backed an extremely
repressive dictatorship in the South and maintained a nuclear arsenal in
South Korea from 1957 until 1991. Hiding behind the fiction that the US
was not directly a party to the hostilities, merely a participant in a
UN force, Washington has consistently refused to negotiate a peace
treaty with North Korea. In the light of this history, it is hardly
surprising that the North Korean regime feels itself to be under threat
from US imperialism.

North Korea is predominantly an urbanised, industrialised country, not
like China, Vietnam, etc, which still have a predominant peasantry. Most
of the industrial plant, however, is obsolete, and the bureaucratic
planning apparatus is suffering from the kind of organic sclerosis that
undermined the former Soviet Union. Output has undoubtedly been steadily
falling (though it is impossible to confirm some Western claims of a 50%
fall over recent years). Debts to European and Japanese banks total
around $3.2bn, and the default on many of the debts is a barrier to
potential investment from abroad. The economy was hit very hard by the
collapse of the Soviet Union after 1990, which deprived North Korea of
cheap imports of oil, fertilisers, and machinery. Serious flooding in
1995-96, which particularly affected the ’bread basket’ areas of the
south, led to a serious famine and has left a legacy of malnourishment
amongst children. There are estimates that between one and two million
died of starvation, and many thousands of refugees fled to North-East
China (with a predominantly ethnic Korean population).

The famine forced the Kim Jong-il leadership to tolerate the growth of
private farmers’ markets, charging higher prices for food products.
Early in 2001 the regime began to implement limited Chinese-style
reforms, raising agricultural prices and some consumer prices. However,
this will not automatically have the same effect as in China in the
1980s, where higher prices for farmers stimulated the rapid growth of
rural industries. North Korea has a very different social structure from
China, Vietnam, etc, where rural-sector growth had a much bigger impact
on the economy than it could in North Korea.

In the summer of 2002, the regime announced the development of two SEZs,
special economic zones (Kaesong just north of the DMZ and Sinuiju, near
the border with China). There is no shortage of capitalists throughout
East Asia eager to exploit North Korea’s cheap labour. South Korean
capitalists in particular, view investments in the North as a way of
opening up the economy, avoiding a precipitous collapse of the North,
and achieving a ’soft landing’ for the disintegrating Stalinist regime.
The economic development of the North, however, will not automatically
follow from overseas investment. In any case, growth throughout East
Asia is likely to be undermined by the developing world downturn. A
’soft landing’ for the North, moreover, depends on a peaceful resolution
of the peninsula’s cold-war era divisions, which is far from being
guaranteed.

North Korea is a grotesque regime. But its development has been heavily
conditioned by the unrelenting military-strategic threat from US
imperialism. Neither US diplomacy nor military aggression (which would
in fact be catastrophic) can resolve the Korean crisis. Only the working
class, applying socialist solutions, can find an exit route from the
dangerous dead-end created by Stalinism and imperialism.

South Korea and the US

"’IN SOME WAYS, the problem in South Korea has become harder to handle
than that of North Korea’, said a Korea specialist with ties to many
members of Bush’s foreign policy team". (New York Times, 2 January)
South Korea is now as much a problem for the US as the North. Roh
Moo-hyun, candidate of the Millennium Democratic Party (MDP), won the
presidential elections (19 December) on a wave of anti-American feeling.
Viewed by the Bush regime as a dangerous populist and nationalist, Roh
supports the continuation of the ’sunshine’ policy - as does a big
section of the South Korean ruling class - and is strongly opposed to
the US policy of aggressive confrontation with the North Korean regime.
Although Roh, now a liberal bourgeois politician, has toned down his
anti-American rhetoric, political changes in the South will unavoidably
pose a challenge to the continued presence of US imperialism in South
Korea, one of its main bases in East Asia.

Shortly before the elections mass demonstrations and candlelit vigils
were triggered by the announcement that a US military court-martial had
acquitted two US soldiers on charges of negligent homicide after their
armoured vehicle had crushed two 14-year-old schoolgirls in June.
Demonstrations continued for weeks, particularly involving young people
but also drawing in broader layers of workers, white-collar workers,
housewives, and shopkeepers. The movement reflected deep resentment at
the continued presence of 37,000 US troops in the country (which costs
South Korea $3bn to $4bn a year). For several decades after the Korean
war (1950-53), the US supported a viciously repressive dictatorship in
the South, which was only cleared out by the massive movement of the
working class in the late 1980s. Moreover, there is growing support for
the idea of reunification of the Korean peninsula and opposition to US
policies which many fear could lead to another devastating war. There is
an overwhelming feeling that South Korea should be treated as an equal
by the US, not merely as a convenient military base. Even the
presidential candidate of the ultra-conservative Grand National Party
(GNP), Lee Hoi-chang, opportunistically joined the candlelit vigil
outside the US embassy in Seoul. Ironically, it was Roh Moo-hyun, trying
to establish ’moderate’ credentials with Washington, who urged the
protesters to tone down their demands.

The rising tide of opposition to the role of US imperialism in Korea was
the key factor in Roh’s narrow victory (48.9% against 46.6% for Lee
Hoi-chang). Support for Roh’s MDP has been undermined over the last few
years, because of president Kim Dae-jung’s economic policies, especially
industrial restructuring and the imposition of new labour laws ending
lifetime job security. These are seen as US-dictated IMF policies, the
economic facet of US domination. There have been massive job losses
(about a quarter of 15 to 29-year-olds are estimated to be unemployed).
Two years ago president Kim Dae-jung deployed the riot police against
Daewoo workers protesting against redundancies. Disillusionment with the
MDP government, which harvested the political gains of the mass workers’
movement that forced through the democratisation of South Korea in the
late 1980s, led to a 10% fall in the turnout compared to the 1997
election (down to 70.2%). Disillusionment with the MDP was also
reflected in the increased vote for the Democratic Labour Party
candidate, Kwon Young-ghil, leader of the Korean Confederation of Trade
Unions (KCTU), who won nearly 4% of the vote, up from 1.2% in 1997.

The ominous standoff between the US and the North did not strengthen the
conservative Lee, a former supreme court judge, previously linked to the
US-backed dictatorship. This indicates a big change from the cold war
political alignments. At the time of Bush’s axis of evil speech (January
2002), even a section of the GNP’s parliamentary representatives joined
with the MDP in condemning Bush’s provocative policy towards the North
Korean regime. This indicates supports for the sunshine policy within
the South Korean ruling class. They fear that a US policy of isolating
the North Korean regime, and threatening a military strike, could lead
to a catastrophic nuclear war. But they also fear an implosion of Kim
Sung-il’s regime, whether from internal weakness or intensified economic
pressure in the form of US-enforced sanctions.

A sudden collapse could lead to a massive migration from the North to
the South, which would have a devastating impact on the already strained
South Korean economy. The majority of South Korean capitalists want the
reunification of the country, but they want it over a period of 20 to 30
years, beginning with some kind of loose federation and moving gradually
towards integration on the basis of capitalism. A rapid unification on
the lines of Germany in 1990-91 would, in their view, destroy the South
Korean economic ’miracle’.

One estimate (Financial Times, 8 November 2002) puts the cost of rapid
unification at $3,200bn, a phenomenal sum for South Korea. The high cost
arises from the enormous disparity in wealth between the two countries:
the South with a population of 50 million has a GDP of nearly $500bn,
while the North, with a population of about 23 million, has a GDP
estimated at only around $15bn. This disparity is about five times
greater than the economic difference between West Germany and the East
in 1990-91.

Behind the ’sunshine policy’ put forward by the previous president, Kim
Dae-jung, and supported by Roh, is the strategy of step by step opening
up of the North to southern-based capitalism. South Korea, now a member
of the OECD, is no longer a cheap labour country, and has recently come
under intensive pressure from China, with its huge reserves of extremely
cheap labour and raw materials. Korean big business is relocating
sections of its production (for instance in electronics and automobiles)
in China, while a section is attempting to open up the North to exploit
its cheap labour. For instance, one big South Korean capitalist, Kim
Yoon-kyu, is beginning to build a $9bn, 49sq kilometre (19sq mile)
industrial park and new town at Gaeseong just north of the demilitarised
zone, only about 70 kilometres north of Seoul. When completed in 2010,
this special economic zone will have 3,000 factories, 100,000 housing
units, and over 1,000 hotel rooms. South Korean capitalists are also
planning to open up rail and road links through North Korea to give the
South access to energy, raw materials and markets in Siberia and China.
Step by step economic colonisation of the North is therefore an
attractive prospect for the South Korean capitalists, whereas rapid
reunification of the peninsula would be a disaster.

After his election, Roh (who takes up the presidency in February)
attempted to play down his radical ’populist’ reputation and reassure
the Bush administration. He described George W as ’cool’, and disavowed
his alleged anti-Americanism (in the 1980s Roh called for the removal of
US forces from South Korea).

Roh, however, will be forced to take account of the profound mood in
favour of reunification and an end to US domination. "I don’t have any
anti-American sentiment", said Roh, "but I won’t kowtow to the
Americans, either". The mass protests over the killing of the two South
Korean schoolgirls by a US military vehicle will ensure, at the very
least, that the issue of revision of the ’Status of Forces Agreement’,
which effectively grants US personnel immunity from South Korean law,
will be on the agenda.

Roh stresses the need for a "mature relationship with the United
States", clearly meaning that his incoming government, not the US,
should take the lead in dealing with North Korea. There is strong
resentment in the country, including among the ruling elite, that US
policy towards the North (including Clinton’s manoeuvres in 1994, which
nearly came to armed conflict), were conducted over the head of the
South Korean government. While attempting to appease the White House,
Roh has spelled out his opposition to the Bush regime’s provocative and
irresponsible policy.

"The US may benefit from a get-tough policy, but we will not", says Roh.
"We must have dialogue with the North and with the US", said Roh on his
election victory. "In this way, we must make sure that the North-US
dispute does not escalate into a war. Now the Republic of Korea must
take a central role. We cannot have a war".

Clearly in any war, the South would be the first target, likely to be
obliterated. Later, Roh said that he had been horrified to learn about
US plans for a strike against North Korea’s nuclear facilities. "At the
time of the elections", said Roh, "some US officials, who held
considerable responsibility in the administration, talked about the
possibility of attacking North Korea. I then felt that no matter what
differences I might face with the US, I would oppose an attack on North
Korea".

Roh Moo-hyun, who comes from a poor farming family, made his reputation
as a human rights lawyer in the 1980s. The capitalist press has
portrayed him as a populist who "mistrusts big business and favours
redistribution of wealth". (Financial Times, 20 December) In reality,
there is no indication that Roh has an anti-capitalist policy that will
defend the interests of the working class. In fact, on the issue of
labour ’flexibility’ (with big business leaders complaining that their
ability to sack workers is still restricted, despite changes in the
labour laws made by Kim Dae-jung) Roh said: "I think there remains some
rigid factors in the labour market. I will try to remove any
unreasonable hurdles". The Korean Chamber of Commerce and Industry has
already made it clear that they regard the new president’s top priority
to be ’strengthening industrial competitiveness and [the] economic
rebound’. Despite the partial recovery from the 1997 crisis, however,
South Korea, together with the rest of Asia, faces a period of economic
turmoil and political upheavals. The working class that brought down the
dictatorship in the 1980s will again move into mass action to defend
working-class interest and struggle to chance society on socialist lines.

The US-North Korea crisis may, in the coming weeks, be diffused through
diplomacy. But the effects will be far-reaching. Mass pressure for the
withdrawal of the US military presence from South Korea and Japan will
intensify. The cold-war framework will rapidly disintegrate, with
intensified rivalry between Japan, China and other regional powers.
North Korea’s use of its nuclear deterrent (actual or potential) to
force the US to retreat will almost certainly lead to further ’nuclear
proliferation’, with Japan and other states drawing the conclusion that
they can wield influence internationally only if they possess nuclear
weapons. A new and more dangerous period of world relations has opened.

From Socialism Today, February 2003 edition, journal of the Socialist
Party, CWI England and Wales.

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